


Lessons in Alone

by annhellsing



Category: A3! (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Morning Sex, Referenced Trauma, Sleepy Cuddles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:42:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24920992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annhellsing/pseuds/annhellsing
Summary: In which Azuma finds a blissfully permanent bedfellow.
Relationships: Yukishiro Azuma/Reader
Kudos: 56





	Lessons in Alone

**Author's Note:**

> a3! has taken over my life so i'll be dumping all the fic i've written for it here over the next couple days.

He reaches out to touch you during sleep. The bed smells like love and sheets you pulled from the dryer. Azuma doesn’t want to open his eyes, so he revels in the warm-black and the fact that nothing terrifying swims in the darkness. There is only you and what you must look like, laid out like sleeping beauty on the other half of his bed.

Picturing it is nice, he nudges up against something soft and warm when he shifts towards you. He brushes a shoulder, maybe, or the curve of your forehead. The two of you are liable to become a tangle of limbs once morning comes. 

There’s a sound from beyond the ink-depth of his closed eyelids. Azuma ignores it, you sigh in your sleep all the time. He moves slowly, slow enough that he might still be dreaming. He feels a hip, a waist, the gentle bumps of your ribcage. You’re lying on your side, facing towards him how you always do. Your shirt –his shirt, he reminds himself with a feverish glee– rides up your stomach.

“I can always tell when you’re awake, you know,” you say. He bets your eyes are still closed, too, happy to exist in a liminal space. So this is what Shakespeare meant about Queen Mab, the fairy that brings loving dreams.

“You must be imagining things,” he replies, “I’m fast asleep, why don’t you join me?”

“Hm,” you sigh again, “you don’t have to tell me twice.”

You fall silent after that. Under any other circumstances he’d feel the loneliness rising up in the back of his throat. The hot press of fear and tears as he tries to grapple with being by himself. It’s an awful thing to be alone.

But he isn’t. Even as you make good on your promise, drifting off with his palm cradling your ribs you haven’t left him. And the closeness that he feels rivals any waking conversation he could have with someone else. Azuma wonders if two people can dream the same dreams when they’re in such close proximity.

His mind shifts to what you might dream of, the possibilities never once proving to be alarming. Your family, maybe. Or success in the future to rival what you’ve already accomplished. Or maybe you think of him with the same devotion and fervour.

That thought almost makes him open his eyes. He wants to ask, though he’s content with the idea that you might think the same about him. And you would be right. All his thoughts, as of late, belong to you.

“I love you,” he says to somebody. Where some might consider it a waste of breath, he thinks now is the best time for you to truly hear him.

Azuma scopes out your body with his fingers, careful not to wake you a second time. Whatever you’re dreaming of, he hopes it’s nice. Peaceful. A reprieve. You’re a reprieve for him, from old memories and a dark shape settled on the other half of the bed.

Loneliness settles around his shoulders, stooping them and changing his posture. It’s easy to tell when he’s been by himself for too long. The results are instant and painful, the sleepless nights dig holes in his health. They alter the way he thinks, until all that makes sense is loss and pain.

In a lot of ways, tonight isn’t much different than the first night. He might’ve known it was love when you knocked on his door. You heard quiet murmurs through the walls, faint sounds and cries for everything to stop.

You stood in his doorway in your rabbit slippers, clutching at the door frame like you were the one terrified. After he lied and said everything was fine, you did too. You said you were having a rough night, bad dreams. You asked if you could stay with him.

It was an act of protection, he realized when you laid yourself out in front of him but made no move to touch. He recalled the not-so-distant time when he would exchange money for something like this. And beautiful though he thought you to be even then, Azuma couldn’t bring himself to spoil the good deed you were trying to do.

Nor the night after that, or the one after that. You came back, sometimes with a fuzzy blanket wrapped around your shoulders and always with two pairs of bunny ears on your feet. Azuma wondered if you were waiting for him to make the first move, that this might not have been profound understanding on your part.

He worried some nights instead of sleeping, worried that it was some inflated courtship ritual. That your actions were not you understanding but in fact representative of a lack of understanding on his part. 

Azuma tried to reach out one night. He put his hand on your hip, his mind wandering to how smooth your thighs would be under his fingers.

“Just sleep,” you whispered, no malice or anger. But still, it was clear. Not quite a ‘no’, if he remembers right. It was a ‘not now’. It was a ‘wait until we’re both awake’.

You made love to him in the morning, when the sun hid the ugly during the day. You kissed him, lips on thin lips and you pressed him back against the mattress. You made sure there was no room for that second, shadowy figure lying at the edge of the bed.

The length of his body was mapped out under your hands. You took without apology, only with consent. And the love you made was good, better than good. You got him to belong to you in an odd twist on his natural behaviour. His head was too clouded with nice thoughts to realize that until after. 

When he did, he decided he liked being had.

Your lips pushed him into a deep and comfortable haze, relaxing as any nighttime dalliance. He slipped in and out of thought, consumed in reverse by your tongue that wandered just as eagerly as your fingers. It was so hard to concentrate, considering where you put it.

He said yes so many times, Azuma couldn’t count them all. He couldn’t count yours, either. There were pleas for more, a few tears of joy from his eyes. A feeling of belonging that settled deep inside of him as he settled in you. 

There was a mutual shiver when he fit into you, the way you sometimes sigh in your sleep. Both times you had your eyes closed, but the life in your body when you took him was breathtaking. You did more than listlessly mumble, then.

“How are you feeling? Any better?” you asked when the coupling was momentarily concluded. Things would strike up again with similar vigour the next morning. Habitually the next morning, though empty spaces during the day would rarely go unfilled.

He lay part-way on your chest. This was also a departure to the highest degree, his own desire to nurture and protect often outweighed any want to be protected. But you held him, you did. You let him listen to your heart and take time with his answer. It was as unnerving as it was a relief that you already knew he was upset.

“After something like that with someone like you, who could feel bad?” he replied. You pursed your lips, giving a mock-kiss to the air around his cheek.

“Keeping secrets gives you wrinkles,” you said. His eyes, moon-yellow, widened until it might’ve been harvest season.

“You’re not serious,” he said, so quickly as to make you giggle. You shook your head and gave him a real kiss.

It was as loving and jarring as being suddenly woken up. His eyes closed for a moment, he leaned in. He gave himself up like a secret begging to be told, and he didn’t have to say a word.

You know, of course. About everything, even if he didn’t have to tell you all of it in great detail. Thankfully, you didn’t want to touch the parts that were too painful. Definitely a first. And even if you don’t know it all, you nevertheless hold some kind of soft ownership of him. Azuma has never been so at peace with an idea.

Tomorrow morning, the two of you will fuck. He looks forward to it in a disembodied sort of way. Azuma likes the certainty of that. He likes knowing you love him back, without needing to hear it directly. 

It doesn’t need to be said, it’s something you can do. You’ve made love an act. He’s more than content with that.

His mind wanders to sex in an idly pleasant way. He wonders, distantly so as not to focus too clearly on any one thing, if you’ll leave bruises. The ones on his chest and thighs have yet to fade. He would like a new necklace, even if he’d have to cover it with makeup.

It’ll be mentioned, he won’t forget.

You’re fast asleep, he can tell by the even rise and fall of your chest. He can feel it under his fingers, his skin to your skin. You’re so much warmer than he is, your heart works overtime to fit him alongside your other responsibilities. In many ways, he’s very grateful.

He tunes out any other unwanted noises, the sound of Itura’s video games or squabbling drunks in the street. So much is so close, but he feels penned in and safe with you guarding the edge of the bed. You sleep on the outer edge so that nothing can get him, rendering the barricade of pillows he used to build long-defunct.

His nose is pressed against the pillow, against a few strands of your hair. You smell like honey and love and good company. Azuma makes a weak sound, not in conjunction with the ‘I love you’ from earlier. Some things are just too big to keep in, that’s all.

The city outside still churns out warm bodies like a factory. Azuma does not lie beside them, he hasn’t for a while. But you’re his bedfellow, the one he loves by day. 

By night, the sound of your dreaming becomes his favourite music.


End file.
